


Words Writ Stay

by HardingHightown



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-17
Updated: 2016-01-17
Packaged: 2018-05-14 12:33:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5744032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HardingHightown/pseuds/HardingHightown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Josephine helps Siba Cadash reply to a letter. Post-game, pre-Trespasser</p>
            </blockquote>





	Words Writ Stay

“This is ridiculous. We’re done.”

Josephine sat at the desk, watching the Inquisitor pace her apartments. As per their usual arrangement, she had come up to share breakfast with her, to go over the most pressing matters and decide on the day’s events. This morning Siba was lively, already risen from her bed and dressed. A faint hint of colour was on her cheeks, though Josie couldn’t tell whether it was embarrassment or anger.

“Inquisitor-”

“We’re here to do go over official documentation. We’ve done that. If you don’t think any of those letters from Orlais are pressing, I think we’re done here.”

“Siba...”

She fixed the dwarf with her best look, the one that had dignitaries quaking in their fine-heeled boots. It managed to stop her in her tracks, at least. She watched as Siba crossed back to the desk, a scowl on her face. The last letter to deal with was the first she had read that morning. The one that required the most urgent answer.

“May I speak as your friend?”

“No,” came the reply, as Siba sat herself on the edge of the desk.

“I will anyway, you know,” she continued, putting away the other documents as she pulled out one particularly bruised piece of parchment.

With a heavy sigh, and a rub of her eyes, Siba settled. “I know.”

Josephine opened the letter, the scent of smithy coal and tallow soap still tinting the edges of the paper. “As your advisor, I admit there are other pieces of correspondence that are, perhaps, more important for the Inquisitor to address. This is true. However, as your friend - and a romantic at heart - I don’t think anything is more important than this.”

“You’re ridiculous, you know.”

“Maybe so. However, I think as ridiculous as I may be, you’d still like me to read this letter to you again.”

She saw Siba swallow, her fingers drumming lightly against the wood of the desk. Sat like this, the great Inquisitor Cadash, veteran of the Carta and saviour of Thedas, looked like an embarrassed school girl, tiny against the enormity of her emotions. With a weak smile, she turned to Josephine, eyes meeting hers for just a moment.

“You’re going to read it anyway. Might as well do it aloud, I suppose.”

Josephine flattened the paper in front of her. Blackwall- Thom’s hand was hardly fair to look at, but clear and bold. It would be simple to teach Siba a few words, should it be needed…

“Josie? Are you going to read it or not?”

“Fine. My dearest Siba-”

“Dearest. Are there other Siba’s out there? Less dear ones?”

“Can I continue?”

“If you must.”

She took a deep breath and started again. 

“My dearest Siba. Today I return to the Free Marches for the first time since we ventured there, all those months ago. To be here without you feels strange. I know I would feel more at ease with you by my side.”

Siba scoffed, halting her in her stride.

“Something wrong, Siba?”

“More at ease with you by my side. If that were true, he wouldn’t have gone.”

Her voice cracked slightly. Josephine thought to reach out and take her hand… but she wasn’t sure she’d truly appreciate it.

Instead, she went back to the paper. “Should I continue?”

“... Go on.”

“...The task is hard, but I hold to what you’ve shown me time and time again. That we can be more than our past, but only if we don’t run from it. I will be a better man today, and I look forward to our future together, when I can be the husband you deserve. Love, your Thom.”

The last words hung in the air. Josephine could hear Siba breathe deeply, and see her hand bunched in a first. Her eyes were squeezed shut.

“Siba? Are you alright?”

“I didn’t want him to do this, you know.”

Siba turned to her, still not quite meeting her eye, stretching out her hand to get rid of the tension in her fist. “I didn’t want him to go. I wanted him here. I didn’t save him to go live in his past. It’s not needed.”

Josephine closed the letter, adding it to her pile. “I think he needed to.”

“Of course you do.”

That sharp edge had returned to her voice. Josephine knew why. Every so often, she’d be reminded of their different stations. The education that she had taken for granted that was so far away for so many Thedosians. The understanding of cultures, of etiquettes and duty and honour so alien to those in the gutters and undercities.

The simple ability to read and write.

She picked up her pen, opened a pot of ink, and pulled out fresh paper from a drawer.

“Come now. We’re going to write a reply. That is our first task for the day.”

“I don’t-”

“He needs to hear from you,” she said, dipping her pen into the well. “What he is doing is hard. It is hard and it is brave and he needs your support. And I want to help you. I want to help both of you.”

A look of understanding passed between them, piecing together something Josephine had not voiced, nor wished to voice. An acknowledgement of flushed faces and vases of flowers and a tradition that was foolish and flippant and yet beloved to her. Thom Rainier, for all his faults, was a man loved. 

A man loved by the both of them, in very different ways.

Josephine cleared her throat, brought the pen to paper, and waited. 

“Whatever you say,” she offered, “That’s what I’ll write.”

After a brief pause, a long breath out then in, Siba Cadash began to dictate.

“Thom… I am sitting watching Josephine turn my words into lines on a page. I wonder if they mean more or less like this. She will probably make them sound less plain. She will give them a flourish I do not have.”

“I am writing it exactly as you say, you know. Even that part. He will know it is you. All of it.”

Siba swallowed before continuing.

“I’ve never put much stock in what people say. I don’t know if it means more when it’s written down. I care more what people do. You are away. You are doing something you feel you need to. Even if I think it’s ridiculous. And dangerous.”

Josephine waited for more. When she looked over, she saw how Siba’s hands gripped the edge of the desk. Her brow was furrowed as she looked over at the bed, biting on her lip before she spoke again.

“Don’t tell me things on paper. Show me. Come back to me soon. Come back whole and happy. And if words are important to you, then have them. I love you. I love you as many times as you can write it.”

Josephine signed off the letter, watching as Siba slid down off the desk, walking away as she adjusted her gloves. She did not meet her eye, preferring instead to inspect an apple left on a tray by the long chair. Taking a bite, she spoke through skin and flesh. 

“D’you think that will do?”

“Yes,” replied Josephine as she sealed it, “I think it will do quite well.”


End file.
